Press Release

Orange is announcing the signature of a memorandum of agreement with Reservoir Sun, a leading player in self-supply solar electricity systems for companies and local government, to set up a photovoltaic power station in Bercenay-en-Othe (Aube)

The station is due to go online in 2025. The project’s first major milestone is the environmental impact analysis.

To fulfill its environmental commitments, Orange is increasingly turning to renewable sources of energy and wishes to accelerate this transition by making the most of solar energy on its tertiary and technical sites. The Group will therefore deploy its first solar farm in France and in Europe[1] on the strategic satellite communications site at Bercenay-en-Othe. The farm will cover a surface area of 50,000 m², or the equivalent of seven football pitches.  With an installed capacity of 5 MW (1MW for self-consumption and 4MW for reinjection), the power station will supply 20% of the site’s energy needs and surplus electricity can be fed back to the grid. This locally generated, low-carbon electricity corresponds to the annual energy consumption of 1,700 homes and will save over 100 tons of CO₂ every year.

The first milestone, starting today, is the environmental impact analysis required to carry out the project, in agreement with the DREAL (Regional Directorate for the Environment, Planning and Housing). This study will be carried out over a period of up to 12 months, or four seasons, to determine the potential impact of the project on living species on the site. The study of the natural environment aims to minimize the impact of the facilities and to recreate, if required, species’ habitats.

Michaël Trabbia, interim CEO for Orange Wholesale and International Networks, declared: “We are happy and proud to launch an ambitious local solar farm project at our Bercenay-en-Othe site. This solar farm reflects our additionality approach and is fully in line with our strategy to develop the use of low-carbon energies, in order to contribute to our environmental commitments. This project thus contributes to securing our energy supply while decarbonizing our activities. »

Mathieu Cambet, Managing Director of Reservoir Sun: “Reservoir Sun is very proud to have been chosen by Orange as a trusted partner for its first solar power project on one of its own sites. We hope that this shared project will mark the start of a strong collaboration to take on the challenges of decarbonization and local energy production.”

Want to learn more of the latest news from the world of telecoms? Register now to recieve the Total Telecom daily newsletter

Also in the news:
Resilience in the face of war: Kyivstar talks challenges and collaboration
BT seeks £100m in savings by merging global and enterprise units
Connected Britain Keynotes: CXO Spotlight

News

Bullitt Satellite Connect will reportedly ensure that customers are connected “wherever you have a clear view of the sky”

This week, at the CES show in Las Vegas, UK-based rugged phone manufacturer has shed light on its much-anticipated Bullitt Satellite Connect service, a two-way satellite messaging service.

Using proprietary software and service components, Bullitt Satellite Connect will provide text messaging services via an app, Bullitt Satellite Messenger. Messages will be relayed via satellite, allowing customers assurance that they will never be without signal so long as they are outside.

The service will first attempt to connect to Wi-Fi or a cellular network, but when these are unavailable it will connect via satellite. Messages sent from Bullitt Satellite Messenger can be received as a simple SMS on smartphones without the app; the receiving party will, however, need to download the app in order to reply.

In addition to messaging, the service will also offer more typical satellite services, such as location tracking and SOS assistance.

Subscriptions for the service will begin at $4.99 a month, with the SOS assistance free for the first year.

“Bullitt Satellite Connect solves a real connectivity problem. American’s send 6 billion SMS text messages each day* but, due to the sheer scale and topography of the country, no single carrier covers more than 70% of the US land mass and around 60 million Americans lose coverage for up to 25% of each day**,” said Richard Wharton, Co-Founder at Bullitt Group.

“That means hundreds of millions of instances where people who want to communicate via their phone cannot. Coverage blackspots persist to a greater and lesser extent the world over. We have a truly international solution. Bullitt Satellite Messenger provides total reassurance that you will have a connection wherever you have a clear view of the sky.”

These capabilities have reportedly been developed over the past two years working alongside partners including chip giant MediaTek, satellite partner Skylo, critical event response specialist FocusPoint International, and others.

The first smartphone to support this new messaging service will be the next device in Motorola’s Defy range, the full details of which have yet to be announced. Bullitt and Motorola first struck a strategic alliance back in January 2021.

Bullitt says the new service is set for commercial launch later this quarter.

*Source: CTIA

**Source: https://www.opensignal.com/2019/09/24/mobile-experience-in-rural-usa-an-operator-comparison

What role will non-terrestrial networks play in the wider telecoms industry in the coming years? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s live Connected America conference in Dallas, Texas

Also in the news:
Resilience in the face of war: Kyivstar talks challenges and collaboration
BT seeks £100m in savings by merging global and enterprise units
Connected Britain Keynotes: CXO Spotlight

Three bits of M&A in three different geographies, two in the FTTH space and one data center: … [visit site to read more]

News

Supply chain issues resulted in Germany’s newest mobile network operator only narrowly meeting its goal of launching 5G services in 2022

This week, new German mobile operator 1&1 has announced the expansion of its 5G coverage with the activation of 50 additional 5G sites in Hamburg, Essen, Düsseldorf, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Munich, and Freiburg. These new sites will be used to make 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services available to customers in those locations.

These new sites join the three already activated in Frankfurt am Main and Karlsruhe in the final days of December last year – three sites which crucially allowed 1&1 to claim to have met its goal of launching commercial 5G services by the end of 2022.

Mobile 5G services, however, will have to wait until later in the year, with 1&1 in fact lagging significantly behind its initial 5G rollout plans.

1&1 was originally aiming to have rolled out 1,000 5G mobile sites by the end of the 2022, as per its regulatory obligations, but in September the company moved to rein in these expectations, blaming a then-unnamed partner for delays that could take up to six months to resolve.

The partner in question was subsequently revealed to be Vodafone’s recently spun-off mobile tower company Vantage Towers.

As a result, in an update this week, the company said that just 235 sites are currently under construction, though CEO Ralph Dommermuth said he was confident that the company could still reach its obligated coverage target of 50% of all households ahead of its 2030 deadline.

Achieving such targets will reportedly require “around 12,600 radio masts and over 500 regional datacentres,” according to Dommermuth.

In the nearer term, 1&1 is required to have passed 25% of the German households by the end of 2025.

It is worth noting here that 1&1 is one of the few operators in the world building a network entirely on Open RAN architecture, with its network being build and managed by Open RAN specialist Rakuten Symphony.

Other vendors involved in various parts of the network include Dell, Supermicro, Cisco, Mavenir, Altiostar, NEC, and Communications Components (CCI).

As such, the performance of 1&1’s network will be closely scrutinised by the international telecoms community, with Open RAN advocates surely hoping it will prove something of a European trailblazer for the burgeoning technology.

How is the German telecoms industry evolving in 2023? Join us at this year’s Connected Germany conference to hear the experts discussing the industry’s hottest topics

Also in the news:
Resilience in the face of war: Kyivstar talks challenges and collaboration
BT seeks £100m in savings by merging global and enterprise units
Connected Britain Keynotes: CXO Spotlight